Somebody Has To Say It

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UPDATE: Scott has a full writeup.

Good job Scott and Michael on pulling together the Capital Connections event on Wednesday night.

The fact that 180 entrepreneurs and investors showed up for the gathering in and of itself speaks for what a great job they did and the need for this type of gathering. Mixing entrepreneurs and folks with money is one of the keys to make Atlanta a better technology community. About a dozen companies set up demos in the room and it was really interesting to walk around and learn about some new concepts that I had not seen before (and I see a lot).

At one point in the evening I got the eerie feeling that I was at the seventh grade dance. All the boys (the entrepreneurs) and all the girls (the investors) were standing around in there own little clumps with no one wanting to cross the room and ask the other to dance. Well let me tell you, the boys have got to make the first move. And you don’t have to ask them to dance. Just go over and do the equivalent of telling them you like their hair, dress, or purse (the purse comment always worked) and take it from there.

May 18, 2007  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

@ Web Entrepreneur Meetup

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Geeking out on selecting a technology for Web apps. I have heard nothing that convinces that the LAMP bundle is not the way to go.

While I am here I am reading about actually working at Meetup. Sounds like an interesting place or at least a humorous and well thought out pitch on why it would be an interesting place to work there vs. GOOG.

May 17, 2007  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship, Web/Tech

Coke Gets A Clue

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Justin Rubner reported this week that the Coca-Cola Company (KO) recently hired the amateur video makers who created the infamous Diet Coke/Mentos spot. They have come a long way since proclaiming “Craziness with Mentos does not fit with the brand personality of Diet Coke.”

Here is the video they created.

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Q1 2007 PwC MoneyTree

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This morning was the PwC “Shaking the MoneyTree” presentation. As is the norm Wes Getman of PwC led things noting the following highlights from the report.

Big venture capital first quarter nationally, at $7.1 billion, the largest since 2001. Early stage deals down on a national basis with 71 deals completed, down 40% from Q4.

Southeast was the fourth highest region in the country, the highest in quite some time. The region raised $580 million, due to blockbuster quarters in Florida and North Carolina. North Carolina companies raised $250 million across 16 deals. Florida did 13 deals valued at $151 million.

In Georgia deals are consistent $99 million on 17 deals, ranking the state as number 13. The 17 deals consisted of four early stage, seven expansion stage, and six later stage deals.

Stephen Fleming of VentureLab announced the formation of the Georgia Tech Innovation Fund. This is a small fund that is targeting seed round financings in the $100k range. The investments are based on charitable gifts from individuals/institutions with a relationship with Tech. Sounded like going to a football game is good enough to qualify. Imlay Investments is the first to “invest” in the fund.

Allen Moseley of Noro Moseley Partners also presented. NMP focuses on successful serial entrepreneurs in the healthcare, technology, and business services sectors. They also invest about 10% of their fund in special opportunities such as the PGA Superstore.

Like a lot of entrepreneurs, Allen lamented the lack of regional capital in the southeast. According to Allen, there are only three regional VC funds with over $150 million funds and 88% of all investment capital originated out of the region.

It was obvious that NMP has heard some of the rumblings going on in the Atlanta entrepreneurial community. He made it clear to point out and wanted the word spread that of the 39 investments in NMP V, 49% was invested in pre-revenue companies and 31% was invested in companies with less then $5 million in revenue.

Allen also discclosed some very confidential information, like Kathy’s age, which I will not disclose here.

May 16, 2007  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Venture Capital

Coffee on Ziggs

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I went and signed up for a Ziggs account after reading about them in the WSJ. Did not care too much for what I saw after I signed up so I did not complete the profile.

This recently showed up in my mailbox:

Dear Lance,
Ziggs Inc has sent you a $10 gift from Starbucks. As a thank you for joining Ziggs, we invite you to have a cup of coffee on us. Instantly sending (and receiving) Starbucks cards as gifts to friends and colleagues is just one of the many friendly services we offer you at Ziggs. Enjoy the buzz. You can use your gift to purchase any of your favorite Starbucks items. In order to redeem your gift please click on the “Redeem” button below. A card will be mailed to you after you have verified your shipping address.

So I gave them my physical mailing address.

If this is some misquided viral marketing effort it worked. Sign up for your free coffee here.

They are not only not charging for the service but paying people to sign up. This is worse than Kozmo but you may as well take advantage of it while you can.

May 15, 2007  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Internet, Marketing

A Billion Is Big!

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And so was the ATDC Entrepreneur Showcase, aka as The Billion Dollar Celebration. We set a record with over 600 registering to attend. The place was packed! It all went off with out a hitch due to Melissa Zbeeb.

Jeff Haynie beat me to the punch on writing about the event as he was live blogging so I will just point there for the details of the event.

The only thing I didn’t see that I wanted to was this:

May 11, 2007  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in atdc

Entrepreneurship & Age

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This may seem old school but I have been doing a little work on exactly what an entrepreneur that is a target for ATDC looks like. So happens that there was a bit of a online debate going on about the subject. I challenged Paul Kedrosky to come up with some numbers to back his ascertain that thinking of entrepreneurs as only young was silly. He did, and it is of great help.

Over 50% of technology entrepreneurs are between the ages of 35 and 54 according to the 2006 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

Thanks Paul.

May 4, 2007  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in atdc, Entrepreneurship

Paul Graham Was Wrong

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When he stated that no one who cares about computers uses a Windows PC. But according to a new study by Forrester Mac users sure do care a lot more about the Internet or more specifically about user generated content on the Internet.

From a write up on the report from Jacqui Cheng over at Ars Technica entitled The Social Technography of Web 2.0:

According to the report, Mac users are significantly more likely than Dell users to fall into the “Creators” category—those who publish blogs, web pages, upload videos, and so on—with nearly twice as many Mac users (a bit over 20 percent) being Creators” than Dell users. Mac users were also more likely than Dell users to be “Critics” (those who comment on blogs and otherwise participate in discussion about the content posted by others), “Collectors” (those who use RSS and bookmarking/tagging services like del.icio.us), and “Joiners” (the group that uses social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook). The biggest percentage difference came in the “Spectators” category—those who merely read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch videos, etc.—where roughly 55 percent of Mac users fell but only 30 percent or so of Dell users.

Only about 35 percent of Mac users were “Inactives,” or those who are not involved in the ecosystem whatsoever, versus about 55 percent of Dell users.

This is not surprising given the stereotypes about Mac users being creative. However, I think this sterotype is morphing to include more business oriented types that have a keen interest in the Internet.

People that care about the Internet use Macs. I am not just saying, I have some facts.

May 3, 2007  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Internet